utilitarian function was restricted to possible
use at a funerary banquet.8
The handles of the Michigan volute krater
were fashioned separately and applied secondarily to the completed, leather-hard vessel. Recurved swans' heads, modeled by hand, effect
the joins at the shoulder. Shooting upward with
a forceful verticality, the broad handles arc
above the mouth of the vessel, to greet the lip
with controlled volutes. The eyes of these volutes are embellished with pre-moulded female
mascaroons, all four produced from the same
matrix. Both the swans and the mascaroons
are characteristic elements of Apulian volute
kraters manufactured from the middle of the
fourth century onward.9
The decorative program employed on the
krater is also characteristic of a certain class of
such vessels. (A number of representational
details are summarized in schematic form for
efficient reference in Tables 1-3). On the obverse, a spear-bearing youth is seated within
an ionic naiskos. He gestures to an attentive
dog (sejant), while two youths and two maidens disposed chiastically proffer symbolic objects. On the neck directly above this naiskos
a lily-pad bears a profile female head surrounded by lush floral tendrils. The reverse
displays a filleted grave stele surmounted by
a kantharos (now difficult to distinguish betcause of the misfiring in this area). Youths and
maidens appear again, once more with objects
in hand and this time arranged in a variant set
of poses and chiastic sequence. On the neck
above this scene an elaborate palmette bouquet echoes the even more luxuriant growth
under each handle.
Of the 17,000 to 18,000 red-figured South
Italian vessels known today, the Kelsey krater
is one of approximately 1,200 which depict a
deceased personage within a naiskos. Most of
these vases are Apulian.o1 The basic imagery
seems to have been developed by the Iliupersis
Painter-who introduced the theme on volute
kraters in the second quarter of the fourth
century B.C.11 It was on this vessel form that
the motif was to become canonized, combined
with the addition of the simpler grave stele
scene on the reverse. The other major decorative schemes for Apulian kraters involve
complex eschatological allegories, historical
narratives and illustrations of myths, epics, and
dramas. 12
In his recent and comprehensive study of
the Apulian vases decorated with naiskos
scenes, Hans Lohmann has catalogued only
fourteen examples which bear a representation of a youth accompanied by a dog within
the naiskos.13 Of these, the Kelsey krater must
certainly rank very high in terms of compositional strength and subtlety of mood. Thus,
our vase is qualitatively distinctive within an
already significantly small subset of its genre.
Interestingly, of the fourteen large vessels attributed by A. D. Trendall to the hand of the
Gioia del Colle Painter (including the Kelsey
krater), three show a youth with a dog in the
naiskos and five others have some version of
a youth with a horse in the naiskos (Fig. 20).14
Relatively speaking, then, this painter seems
to have had a particular penchant for the manand-trusted-animal theme.
Given the significance of the Gioia del Colle
Painter as characterized by Trendall, it is particularly important to establish with some precision the types of criteria by which attributions
to specific hands tend to be made in the realm
of South Italian pottery. Ultimately our concern is to determine how well, in fact, the Kelsey krater fits into the oeuvre of this influential
artist. The Gioia del Colle Painter was first recognized as a distinctive hand by Bianca Maria
Scarfi, on the basis of two vessels excavated at
the site of Gioia del Colle (Monte Sannace) in
1957.15 She grouped a series of red-figured
vases together under this rubric, employing
generally recognized procedures of attribution
analysis familiar to all students of Greek
painted pottery and ultimately dependent, of
course, upon principles first applied systematically to the classification of Italian Renaissance paintings by Giovanni Morelli.16 The
Kelsey krater was not known to Scarfi at that
time, and although Trendall has indeed included it as a piece by the hand of the Gioia
del Colle Painter, there is no published account of the analytical process by which he
reached this decision.
In her attribution article, Scarfi treats comparatively four volute kraters bearing naiskos
scenes, establishing a network of formal interrelationships which seem to her conclusively
